Memorial Day Ceremony today

Each year our community packs the El Dorado County Veterans Monument grounds to honor those who have served the cause of freedom. Today the tradition continues.

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The Friends of the Veterans Monument will be hosting a Memorial Day Ceremony for El Dorado County on Monday, May 26 at 11 a.m. at the El Dorado County Veterans Monument on 360 Fair Lane (county Government Center) in Placerville.

The El Dorado County Veterans Monument symbolizes the freedoms, institutions and way of life that our veterans have gallantly sacrificed to protect. During the singing of our National Anthem, the distant rumbling of vintage radial engines will be heard as a flight of WWII-era war birds approaches the monument. Their radial engines become a thundering sound — felt as much as heard — as they fill the air-space above the Veterans Monument.

Event highlights are as follows:

• A bronze plaque will be unveiled honoring Friend of the Veterans Monument, Maj. Kurt Chew-Een Lee, NC USMC. During the Korean War, Maj. Lee (then First Lt. Lee) led 500 U.S. Marines in single file in the dead of night with only a compass to guide them over mountainous terrain, in freezing temperatures and waist-high snow, to attack from the rear an estimated 60,000 Chinese soldiers who had encircled 8,000 American Marines. His mission was successful, allowing them to avoid certain death or capture.
• There will be a prresentation of the annual Veterans Monument Scholarship award.
• El Dorado County District Attorney Vern Pierson, former 101st Airborne/California National Guard, will officiate as Master of Ceremonies.
• William “Bill” Roby, executive director of the El Dorado Community Foundation, will comment on the Veterans Monument “Welcome Home Fund.”
• Bagpiper LCDR Bill Tubbs, USCGR, will perform.
• The Ponderosa High School Chamber Choir will perform a chorus.
• A 21-gun salute will be done by the El Dorado County Veterans Rifle Team.
• The picturesque El Dorado County Veterans Monument, many generations of veterans and their families, flyovers and more will be honored and showcased.